Since the advent of computers, there has been progress towards creating a digital or paperless office environment. Digitally created documents may be efficiently stored and tracked in a document management system. However paper documents present unique difficulties. For example, paper documents originating from sources external to the office or organization are difficult to efficiently integrate into the digital environment.
In an effort to integrate paper documents into the digital environment, technology has been developed to image or scan paper documents. For example, digital copiers, multifunction devices, and network scanners offer the potential to image hardcopy documents.
Some of such devices have the capability of recognizing text within a document. For example, optical character recognition (“OCR”) software allows for the text of a document to be interpreted and digitally reproduced. However, OCR technology is prone to errors due in part to the difficulty of interpreting different fonts and imperfections in the scanned document.
Other devices are capable of recognizing indicia placed upon a document to better enable bulk scanning of documents. For example, a barcode affixed to a document by a user may be recognized and provide limited instructions to the device, such as an indication of the beginning of the document, the manner in which to orient the document for scanning, or the physical location of the paper document.
However, known systems lack the ability to identify the document or associate the document with an existing matter or transaction profile. Known systems further lack the ability to automatically update a profile based on the contents of the document, notify users of the document's receipt, and/or request approval of the particular document or an associated task.